


When He Felt It

by orphan_account



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Damon POV - Freeform, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e03 Friday Night Bites, F/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 07:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10381281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Damon Salvatore is a b*tch of a head to get into.(In I dove.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short one-shot of all the scenes between Damon and Elena in the third episode of Season 1.  
> It's just- ughhh it's one of my all-time favorite Delena Episodes, and I think it's because it's the episode during which (I think) Damon realizes he has feelings for Elena (already).
> 
> And I mean, for all the shit they have comin' for them, and for how much of a lil' shit Season 1 Damon is, there is something really warm about that freakin' episode.
> 
> So here's how I think those scenes went down through Damon's eyes.

**[Kitchen]**  
  
  
  
Elena the busy-body.

Interesting. _Weird_.

It’s like watching Katherine do chores. She’d never.

Elena makes dish-rinsing look good.

“One more!”

"Hm, thank you-” I drop the glass. Elena gasps, just before I catch it. I like the look on her face when I do. Feels nice to show off a little. And I have to hand it to Elena--she’s no Katherine, but she’s endearing in her own right. When she smiles and laughs, it’s different than what I expect. It’s...warm. “Nice save,” Elena says with a cute lil’ smile. 

She is surprisingly fun, for someone decades my junior. I was so certain she’d be boring.  
  
I actually mean it when I declare, “I like you. You know how to laugh. And you make Stefan smile, which is something I haven’t seen in a veeery long time.”

A crease forms between her eyes. “Earlier...did you mean...Katherine?”

I feel my gut lurch, hearing her name. I wish _that_ would go away. What’s a 170-year-old set-in-his-ways-and-pining-for-his-lost-love to do. “Mmhm.” I need something to do with my hands, so I take the dish from hers, placing it into the washer myself.

“How did she die?”

Well Elena sure isn’t shy.

She looks me in the eye when she asks. It’s...hard to meet them. Hard to talk about Katherine with someone who doesn’t know--someone who could be her twin, and doesn’t know.

“A fire….A tragic fire.”  
  
“Recently?”

 _Not at all._ “Seems like it was yesterday.”  
  
“...What was she like?”

 _Loaded question._ And a difficult one, for some reason. It takes me a minute. “She was beautiful. A lot like you, in that department.” I wish I could laugh. My chest feels too tight. I’m off-script--didn’t go into the kitchen with my lines memorized. There’s a lot of room to slip and toss the script out altogether, with Elena. “She was also very complicated, and selfish, and at times not very kind- but very sexy and seductive.”

I watch Elena’s eyes hone in on the confession. _Slip, slip, slip._ “So...which one of you dated her first?”

I huff a laugh. “Nicely deduced.” _Clever girl._ “Ask Stefan. I’m sure his answer differs from mine.” I shut the dishwasher and think, _fuck it_ , as I throw out the script.

...As I watch Elena, it becomes easier to separate her from Katherine. It’s gotta be this kitchen; this context. It’s all so...human. Katherine starts to blur, and the mundane setting--the warm light, the low hum of the dishwasher, calloused hands folding cloth napkins--lend Elena a sharper visage.  
  
It’s uncomfortably comfortable.

I’m not talking to Katherine Pierce.

I’ve known that--obviously--but here; in this house--this kitchen, watching her...I finally start to accept it.

I’m talking to Elena Gilbert. Youthful, responsible, _human…_ .

“I’d quit cheerleading if I were you.” I follow her to the island and, again, fall into the task beside her.

“Why do you say that?”  
  
“Aww _,_ I saw you at practice--you looked _mmmis_ erable.” _Cute, though. Loved the shorts.  
_

“You saw that?”

 _Pft._ “Am I wrong?”

I still don’t know Elena. I don’t know how she’ll react--what she’ll say or do, how she’ll respond. Not yet.

I want to know it all, and she’s impossible not to watch. “I used to love it. It was- fun. But things are different this year. Everything that used to matter, doesn’t anymore.”

“So don’t let it. Quit! Move on. Problem solved, ta-da.”  
  
“Some things could matter again.”  
  
_That’s adorable_ .

Her personality gradually reveals itself; clever, youthful, responsible, _and_ naive.

“Maybe. But...seems a little unrealistic to me.”

There’s a comfortable silence. I love those. They’re so rare. I fold another napkin.

“I’m sorry,” Elena says suddenly.  
  
...Huh?

I almost ask when she finishes.

“About Katherine.”  
  
...

“You lost her, too.”

…

...It’s...

...It’s an acknowledgement that- I didn’t know I needed.  

...I did.

I _did._  
  
_I lost her, too._  
  
…

…The kitchen...shrinks around us, and all of my focus is on her.

On her eyes.  

 _Elena_ .  
  
In an instant, her personality has revealed it’s beating heart.  
  
...And I...seriously start to understand.

She offers it so freely. So naturally. As if it’s the easiest thing for her to do; breathing it into every space she occupies. It’s what bridges the void in my brother’s eyes, and what makes Caroline choke on her rude speech. It’s what raises little Bonnie’s hackles at Caroline’s thoughtless words, and breathes surprise, even gratitude, into my cold lungs.  
  
Elena’s kindness.  

Elena Gilbert is kind.  
  
It’s...it’s new. It’s something very new.  
  
...I really was... _so_ sure...that she’d be boring….  
  
“Hey, need some help?” Little Bonnie interrupts us, eager to bask in the same warmth I’m caught witless in. I should feel relieved. I’m mostly irritated.  
  
Still. Something in me...shifts, and I get it. I wish I didn’t, but I do. “Sure, why not?”

 

\---

 

  
**[Football Lot]**

  
It’s as good a time as any, what with Brother Dear preoccupied with his boring human shit. I hear the beep of an unlocked car, and catch her irresistible scent. I want to be close. I want to see her. I want to surprise her.  
  
So I do.  
  
She turns, practically into my chest, and gasps. “You scared me, what- what are you doing here?”  
  
I remember the script and school my physical reaction at the sight of my favorite face. Ahh, I missed her face.

“I’m hiding from Caroline,” I whisper, all conspirator-like.

“Why is that?” She whispers back, playing along. _Cuuute._    
  
_Lines_ , I tell myself. What would a seventeen-year-old girl want to hear? That her company is preferred over another's? It isn't even a lie, where Elena is concerned--of all the pretty girls in this dinky town, Elena is unmatched. Inside and out. “I need a break. She talks more than I can listen.”

“That could be a sign.”

“Well, she’s uh- she’s awfully young.” The most painfully seventeen seventeen-year-old to ever seventeen, really. I’m lucky I escaped without my brain leaking out of my ears.  

“Not much younger than you are.” She points out.

Right. I huff a laugh. Elena doesn’t suffer fools, and fool is my only bit right now--my only character as long as Stiffity-Stefan keeps her in the dark about all the vampy stuff. Still, I wonder if letting Elena steer the conversation will yield...better results.  
  
“I don’t see it going anywhere in the bigger picture. I think she’d drive me crazy.”

“Caroline does have some really annoying traits, but we’ve been friends since the first grade and that means something to me.”

 _Fuck_ , never mind. I take the steering wheel back with a screech of the metaphorical tires. “Duly noted.” She’s this loyal to Bitching Barbie? I quickly snuff out all the why’s surrounding that flicker of curiosity before the conversation is out of my hands entirely. There’s a mission, here. My character, lines; the script. “I’m sorry if I make you uncomfortable. That’s- ‘s not my intention.”

Elena is quick. Eyes penetrating. “Yes it is. Otherwise you wouldn’t put an alternate meaning behind everything you say.”  
  
...This isn’t working at all. Her surprising amount of perception should annoy me more than it impresses me. “You’re right. I do have other intentions. But so do you.”

“Really.” She snarks, tongue like a whip.

Mmm, I just- love that look on her face. I really, really love that look on Elena’s face.

There’s something in the air between us that makes the next lines in my little script...difficult. I hate to think of it as vulnerability--it’s not quite that. Can’t be. _Shouldn’t_ be. There’s no rejection at the end of this scene. I’m the director here. I know how it ends. It ends the way I want it to end. More even than that, Elena isn’t the Love Interest. My Love Interest is sealed in a tomb, waiting for me to rescue her. Elena isn’t Katherine. She's a side-character in my and Katherine's story.

But it’s- the words are harder to say out loud than I expected.

“I see it. You want me.

“Excuse me?”  
  
_Don’t do that, Bambi._ “I get to you. You find yourself _drawn_ to me. You think about me even when you don’t want to think about me--I bet you even _dreamed_ about me.” I was there to assure it. _Bet you haven’t told Brother Dearest._ I conjure the power in my blood and widen my gaze, pulling her in with blown pupils and a sure voice. “And right now...you want to kiss me.”

And the scene-

 _SLAP._  
  
I feel the sting of a cold palm. _What the hell?_  

“What the _hell?_ ” She demands, echoing my confusion.

It didn’t hurt, but my hand finds its way to my cheek regardless. Seriously, what the hell? My compulsion didn’t work?

...Vervain.

 _Stefan_.

“I don’t know what game you’re trying to play with Stefan here, but I don’t want to be part of it.” Her voice is fierce and firm. I can’t meet her eyes. My cheek stings a whole lot less than my goddamn pride does--this is not how this scene was meant to end, and it makes my blood simmer. “I don’t know what happened in the past, but let’s get one thing straight,” she declares.  
  
“I am _not_. _Katherine_.”  
  
She waltzes off and all I can think is,

 _No._ _  
_ _  
_ _You most definitely are not._  


\---

 

**[Elena’s Bedroom]**

 

I want to see her. I want to smell her and touch her and hold her, too, but mostly...mostly I just want to be close to her.

_“I am not. Katherine.”  
_

I can't pretend she is. Not anymore. Not after that night in her kitchen. I wish I still could.

I really fuckin’ can't.

Sneaking into her bedroom, quiet as her own breathing, I find her.

It's creepy and I know it is.

But I'm the bad guy in Stefan’s script, after all. Unthinking, unfeeling...inhuman.

...If it weren’t for that feeling, downstairs in her kitchen...warm and comfortable...This feeling, here, in her cozy, lived-in room….

Something about her….

I _feel_ human.

I feel _really, painfully_ human _.  
_

There's a tender quirk to Elena’s mouth, and an unbearably sweet softness to the rest of her sleeping features. Her diary--her heart--rests beside her listless arm, wide-open and vulnerable.

My hand lifts nearly of it's own volition.

I wish I didn't understand myself so well. I wish I wasn't old enough to know what this is--what I'm doing here.

...I wish I didn't have these feelings.

I shouldn't have the room for them.

I'm the villain. And my Villainous Love Interest is waiting for me to break the spell and kiss her awake so we can villain off into the villainous sunset together to the end of our villainous days.

...My script starts to blur with Stefan’s as I tenderly slide the back of my hand down Elena’s soft, soft cheek.  
  
I’m the villain….

 _You're too_ good _, Elena.  
_

_“I am not Katherine.”_  

 _You're_ _the hero of this story.  
_

_“I am not Katherine.”  
_

_You're too giving. Too self-sacrificing, too_ loving _...and somehow you’re stronger for it.  
_

_“I am not Katherine.”  
_

_I know.  
_

_You're Elena.  
_

_...And I love you for that.  
_

_I already love you so much for that.  
_

_…  
_

Her eyelashes shiver. It’s my cue.  
  
“ _[Exit]_ ” ...For now.


End file.
